Our Lies and Eyes
by Gilded Blue
Summary: Another warped story...


_This story does not necessarily go in any sort of linear fashion. My bad. _

**Our Lies and Eyes**

Omnipresence is beating me to a pulp, currently. God is not benevolent. He's black with hatred, crimson flecks of my blood mingled between his nails, his eyes are blazing, glittering and they're fixed on me. I'm on my hands and knees with shaking hands from exhaustion and defiance, just letting the sweat pour down my head. All he thinks to do is deliver a sharp kick to my head in response, breaking my nose with a sickening crunch and causing me to fall back against the hard metal wall. I think the exact sound I made, bodily fluids swashing around was, "Guh!"

_Do I make you so uncomfortable? Are you cringing? Do you want to stop reading this? _

No other words describe adequately my father's fury, wretched man that he is. When his eyes set themselves on me like black ink, I thought I'd be soiled forever, like he would surely drown me in my own blood. He _knows_, he really knows, and he's furious. He's grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. Arms don't stretch like that, they don't _move _that way, but my all-powerful malevolent father and all his raging forces have decided that this is unimportant. I'm screaming in pain. It's more of an "ah" sound agonizingly slow as it trails on and on until my voice runs out like blood rushing out of an open gash.

The pain is so black and intense that the only way I can keep my calm is to focus on my father's omnipresence and foresight. This is the man that taught me how to be a man. This is the man that made me march in the snow when I had colds, the same bastard that had taken me to space for three months a year for intense training on some distant and extreme planet. He would never tell me why, he would just tell me to be proud that I got to take his beatings and even more honored because the experience was good for me.

I guess I should elaborate on the situation at hand. The very angry looking man, all-seeing and all-knowing god of my life, is Vegeta. He's a prince, and he's my dad, and he made me a prince and he made my sister a princess.

This is all her fault. I hope the next boy that she kisses has something really contagious. I hope it will be Goten. Then we'll all be on the same page.

It may be a little too late to admit this, but I guess if I was her dad, I'd hate me too right now. I'd twist my arm behind my back and make me squeal too. I'd be enraged and disgusted and possessive. My father's reaction is so natural to me that it's really easy for me to take that pain and imagine it away.

I'm thinking of a ball, a blue ball, bouncing around on some warm sand the color of fresh snow. I realize this is a memory and I almost manage to snuggle into this little oasis my mind has provided me entirely, the loophole through which even my father's rage and strength cannot penetrate. I want the thought to encompass me such that I survive the rest of tonight because it will be dad's very long, torturous way of telling me to stay the fuck away from my little sister.

It doesn't matter, anyway. The image is clear, and I can recall all of her details so easily. It takes no effort to conjure this young woman's face inside of my head. I see cerulean orbs dazzling the breath out of me, much like my father's fists, she renders me powerless.

Right now, my father could be slaughtering me with his own hands and I would still be screaming, but my mind is far away, on Bura's skin the way it looked that day, in the sun, playing volleyball with a group of boys until I come up and she insists on skipping away with me.

We ate sandwiches on the rocks and watched the sea stretch out as far as we could see. I told her, stretching out a long finger to point at the cool water below, content and indifferent to us and left to its own devices, "Look, sweetheart, the color is identical."

"What do you mean?" she asks, cocking her head to the side. In my current predicament, I can't really do much other than lament the adorable way that her brows knit in her confusion and innocence. She can't be older than thirteen or fourteen. Her shorts are orange and her socks are pink and she looks like an image of mom I saw from a long, long time ago.

Dad grumbled a little bit and when he saw me staring at her as she was cleaning up, he pulled me away to "train" and upped the gravity dramatically. I remember struggling to stand as he lorded over me, laughing. I didn't know at the time why he was so angry with me, but it occurs to me now that my father knew that this was the first time I ever saw her as anything more than a sister. He understood before I did. He's god, and he's not a benevolent one.

Later, back on the beach, I caught Bura strolling around the shore, letting the waves hit her ankles every now and then. Sea foam licked at her toes, the sensation so pleasing to her that she let emitted little bubbles of laughter along the trail.

"It's not safe to be at the beach at night." I said severely as I caught up to her. I was trying to sound caring and big-brotherly, but she didn't seem to get that. She didn't look back at me at first. She was too absorbed in her own world.

"Is it my fault?" she asked, suddenly, slowly, unsure of herself. She seemed terribly sad about something very suddenly and I frowned, touching her shoulder. Her gaze sucked me dry of something, and I wanted nothing more than to make her happy again.

First I have to decode her message. "Bra, what are you talking about?" I ask. She giggles a little bit, moving a hand up to cover her smiling mouth as if it's a secret.

Happy little sea nymph! Even then I knew that something was stirring inside of me, something was recognizing something in her that I ought to not. Bra shivers at my touch and tries to look in my direction before ultimately opting to continue walking, "Daddy got mad at you for not watching me," she finally said, shaking her head a little bit in disapproval, "I don't know why he was so hard on you in the Gravity Chamber. He made you go home and train with him instead of staying with me and he was rough."

I laughed a little bit in return, "What is this? My own little sister thinks I'm so weak that I can't take a good sparring match with our father?"

The most amusing part about her concern is the fact that the reality is that my father saw me checking my sister out and beat the Hell out of me for it, thinking that he could call it something more innocent and rough me up until the memory of it was so awful I would never think to do such a terrible thing ever again.

It's quite the opposite, really, of what she thinks. It's my turn to laugh, but I don't, because it's not funny.

She's still strolling around, the warm water coming to lap at her heels and the bottom of her dress. "Daddy," Bra said, turning to look at me, "he got really angry about something, I can just tell. I know you're lying."

I smiled and took her hand and already I adored the warmth that it emitted, "Come on. It will be much safer to walk around on the beach at night together." I pick up the blue ball, the one from before. It seems to linger in the air and bounce forever before she catches it. It's in slow motion, and the images are awkward and fragmented.

When Bra catches it, she's an angel. Her skin is almost golden.

"**Boy!" **I hear him bellow at me in a ferocious, roaring call. He's not through with me yet, I know it.

**I tried really, really hard to be normal, you know. **

I needed to go out with someone. It was starting to look bad. Everyone was wondering where Trunks Briefs was, what he was doing, and who he was dating. Who brings his seventeen year old sister out on a date with him?

She looked stunning, by the way. Bra, I mean. The blonde was hot, hourglass shape with long black lashes extending out towards me like mini-daggers, but she huffed a little bit after the third date upon seeing Bura's hand in mine or her designated seat on the passenger side, any slight gesture of my partialness to Bra seemed to be blatant and only there to offend. The blonde was furious and a stitch irrational. I suppose in retrospect I was not so subtle.

It starts out really weird and gets progressively worse.

Marron was the perfect choice: a young, attractive blonde. She wasn't dumb or slow, but she was kind and sweet, just a little bit naïve. I liked it, but I dreaded the day that sex would be initiated in our relationship.

When it happened, it was the one time I opted to see her without Bra somehow running around. I like sleeping with Marron, I really do.

She expected something from me after that. When she would bat her eyelashes at me, or when she would embrace me with flushed cheeks. Oh, that.

I decided that it was time to go. I rotated women like that. I'd date them until I slept with them, sleep with them until they gave me those longing gazes, and then find another date. And there was always another date.

My mother never liked it. She didn't exactly ignore it the way that she did Bra's boyfriends. But she didn't react to my girlfriends the way that Bra did.

Bra would see me come home from a date, barge in my room, throw herself on my bed as I was unbuttoning my shirt, and pout at me.

"Yes?" I ask, raising a brow.

"You went out to dinner at my favorite restaurant with another girl."

"Marron is a sweet girl."

"I don't like her. What happened to Cindy?"

"Her name was Carrie and if I recall correctly you didn't like her either."

Bra Briefs sighs, resting her chin in her palms as she crosses her legs, lying flat on her stomach, still pouting at me. "So what did you guys do?"

I raised a brow, but stopped unbuttoning my shirt. I do not miss the part where her eyes skip downwards before she turns her head to the size, shaking it a little as if in wonder, and then feeling a sudden urgent need to extinguish the thought or image in question.

Awkward silence. "So, Little Sister," I say, and she looks up with bright eyes, "what did you do tonight?"

Bra shrugged, "Mom burnt dinner."

"Naturally, why was she cooking?"

"I'm not sure."

A nod. She's still on my bed, in that t-shirt and those shorts, flashing her legs, and I am tired and ready to get to bed but I would stand there all night watching her if only we could think of something to talk about that wouldn't inevitably lead to cold pauses and staring.

In some ways, we are very close, and in others, terribly far apart.

**Awkward Stage**

Bra hit me.

"Ow." I said, dryly. "Why are you hitting me? You should try affection, it works better."

She hits me again.

Ow.

My father glares at me.

Bra hits me again.

**Your Lips and Fingertips **

_My name is Bra Briefs Vegeta. I'm similar to my father in that this is not the first time I've died. The Dragon decided that this wish allowed too many people to play "fast and loose" so you had to stay dead for six months after the first time, a year after the second, and two years after the third. The first time I just felt weird, treated it like a vacation. Suicide seemed totally chic at the time. It was my brother that wished me back. But this time was different. The second time around, someone killed me. I don't like to talk about it or him too much, but he got into an accident shortly after my family found my body and he was not wished back. Not being allowed to walk among the living changes you. You're haunted. I had nightmares and only Trunks took them away, and when Vegeta took Trunks away… _

I don't care if it hurts; I have a right to my thoughts. The cool kids here and in a land afar could care less. They're too chic and too snobby for my problems, too stiff or too hardened for my delivery, and too boring or too cold for my shenanigans and games. They're too soft for my abrasive side, too defiant of the manipulative bitch I can be. They're too wounded themselves to be of any use to me. They're too selfish to even see me. They come and they go, like cars passing by.

They're too afraid of me for reasons unknown to mankind. They're too angry with me for very good reasons. They're too disgusted by me or afraid for me. Some of them love me, just a little bit, and sometimes I throw them a smile or a cigarette. I would be better if I could. Maybe I would need you less. Maybe I would be less… sad? …Angry …aloof?

I wonder what it is about me, that I have friends and I have lovers but they come and go like tea or coffee or trash.

But I personally don't think that I need any of these people. I go back to them, for stupid reasons. Sometimes they remind me of my brother. I miss him, you know.

Whatever makes him happy, right? He doesn't want to be around me, you know. The clothes I used to wear in front of him. The things I used to say to him. Want to know a secret? I did it on purpose. I would watch his reaction so carefully to see if on any level he was maybe paying attention to me the way that I paid attention to him.

When the day is all over, I feel myself slow down at night. I just sort of look around at different aspects of my life, sometimes I do the dishes. Mostly I need it.

Combined with the cigarettes, I get sick all the time.

Sometimes he shows up at my door to yell at me. Sometimes he shows up at my door with cough syrup. He's recently started buying for me.

We used to be so close together, and now he hates me forever.

**Do I make you so uncomfortable? **

"What the _Hell_?" Goten looked at Trunks, shaking his head. "Are you insane? Why would you do this?"

"Look, would you rather I buy for her or she buy for her? Because frankly, I think Bra's got a poor choice of character-"

Goten shook his head, "How are you in any way condoning this behavior? Your sister needs help."

"Everyone smokes pot and drinks and parties, Goten." Trunks said, shaking his head, "It's a stage and she's going to fall out of it and I don't want to be the bad guy here, I just want to help her get out of it. She's just rebelling against the system, or whatever."

"I can't believe you're so condescending. That is not all she's doing." Goten pointed out, "Look, I know you're her brother and I get that guys are rich and you think you can do whatever you want, but I care way too much about Bura to just let her get into drugs. I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth, Trunks, how screwed up can your family possibly get?"

Trunks glared at him. "I'll take care of my little sister, thanks."

"What happened to you?" Goten asked, softening up, "Why are you so callous and calculating these days? Why is she the only one you think about?" Trunks looked up. Goten laughed. "You're serious, right? You thought I wouldn't notice?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, because what else would he say?

"_Her. _You like her, a lot."

Trunks shot him an icy look, "She's my life, and that's all you need to know."

Goten could have sworn it was Vegeta and not his best friend that tightened his tie and strode past him, knocking shoulders with a slight sneer and a smirk. His eyes were bid and wide. He took a step back, and slowly he asked, "So… what does that mean, about us?"

**When She's high or drunk…**

(Bra gets really sexual )

This is not the first time she's found her way into my lap. I try to pretend like it means nothing to me, but it's a very frustrating experience for me. When Goten figures out that drugs facilitate our "unnatural" relationship, his jealousy reaches a peak. I tell him to not mind. I'm not manipulating her, I swear. Goten is just jealous. I don't want to know why. I don't want to know the way I think about Goten either.

I think in my attempts to be normal, denial became a normal part of my life. Everything was falling apart and quickly. I was out late most nights forgetting young and innocent Bura while she was just getting started at being sexy and tormented. No moral compass, no system control.

Bra just did things. She flew off the edge, and when she started edging closer and closer to me at night, I let her.

Walking in on me without a shirt on, I think that was the first real incident. She'd seen me without a shirt on before. She'd seen me naked before, but right after the shower she stared at me with fiery eyes after a training bout with her father.

Sitting on my lap sometimes would happen next. A weird evolution, I'm sure. Soon things escalate.

She guides my hand to her breast. She feels the light brush of my fingernails against her pink nipples. I think about rosebuds.

(And I like it.)

**We're back in time…**

"Bra, you're not wearing that."

"Just let her wear whatever she wants." Goten said, shaking his head.

"She's just a kid. She can't come with us looking like that."

Every guy there will be looking at her, absolutely not. No one is touching her. I don't even want her to come. It was Goten that insisted, he seems to be doing that so very much lately, insisting that my little sister comes out with us. She turned fifteen and got cool to hang out with or something. He's eight years older than she is, he should be insisting that she cover up just like I do.

Goten does not think the way I do.

Bra whined, but changed her clothes. She did it to make me happy. I miss the days when she did whatever I told her to on virtue of its pleasing me.

**And of course we fought about everything:**

I guess it was always an issue of control. I called her home one night when she went to a party with a boy and she didn't respond, so I took her out of the party, and she threw a fit on the lawn of Capsule Corporations.

"**Why do you hate me?" **she shouted, clenching her fist at me as if she could hurt me any more than she already had.

I am nine years older than Bura. At one time I believed in the goodness and purity of my sister the way that one ought to believe in God. It was infallible, immortal.

It didn't last, though. She hit puberty. She started dating.

"The next time I call you and tell you to come," I snapped, hand hard on her wrist the way that father would sometimes grab mother in vicious fights, "you come."

"But I was-"

"I don't care what you were doing."

"Fuck you!" she shouted, shaking her fist.

Oh, would you?

I agonize over moments like that.

**Trunks and Goten: **

With trembling hands, I write:

It's good to be the prince, you have no idea. The woman, the mother, and her tender cheeks, and her rosy lips, and her supple flesh, cigarette in hand, mouth parted into a sigh, smoke floating outwards, glowing. She's regal, really. I love her in purple.

More than that, the father. The father was not a very simple thing, he was rather complex, in fact. The father was something else, something beyond respect or acknowledgement. The father offered pride, the father offered violence.

While the mother offered so much pleasure, the father gave the offer of power.

This was unlike the situation for the sister. While the father gave boundaries for the girl, the mother offered practicality. There is nothing softer than her hands. There is no smile brighter. She will never know work. She does not need to. It is good to be the princess.

I guess I'm kind of rambling, aren't I? Either that or I'm getting really slow. My father seems to think so. I looked at Bra that way again, and trouble came. He never really outright says anything. And yet it is so clear why he is angry, his daughter will not be seen by anyone.

He doesn't seem to be surprised about it. He's just really, really pissed off and even moreso horrified at the idea of Bra being seduced by someone so close to her heart. I know what he thinks, he thinks I'm going to take advantage of her, because she's young and she's eager to make me happy, and she depends on me, and because no matter how hard I brace myself for her throwing herself into my life, spoiled child that she is, I always lick my lips when I think of her.

O, my god. O, my father. She's not the one that needs to be protected. I'm not the one you need to be defending her from.

Goten coughed and looked at me. I put my hand on his shoulder, "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

**Trunks, asleep**

That night he had a dream. It started with his sister, asleep. Her blankets were a royal purple, contrasting fantastically with the color of her hair and eyes. He circles her, without a shirt on, one button undone on his pants.

He stops every few paces or slows down, to look at her, examine her milky skin, long legs, and barely covered back. The thin sheet shimmered shyly in the moonlight. She moans a little bit, stirring slightly, and he stops to watch her. But when he looks in her eyes, in an instant he found that instead he was looking at his mother.

"Hold your brother's hand, sweetie." Bulma said gently.

The adult version of Bura was now standing just feet away, behind his mother bent forward with her hands on her hips, smiling at him. He couldn't tell how old he was, he was looking from his mother to Bura in shock and silence.

Bura was wearing a lot of makeup, looking up at him sadly in a skirted mini-dress. Her hands seemed tiny, painted and gripping the tip of the bottom of the skirt, pooling away from her thighs.

No one's hands are softer than hers.

Trunks looks to the side, blushing because he has naughty thoughts and both women know it, and when his head snaps back to the sound of Bra's heels delicately touching the pavement as she steps towards him, hand outstretched, he finds himself looking in the eyes of a five year old with too much makeup on and a red dress, much too short and revealing for such a young body. Her hand was a little chubby with chipped polish, adorably so.

The young prince reaches his hand out, "I'll take her, Mom!"

His mother's voice fades into the darkness.

**This is right before Bra committed suicide and died for the first time: **

Bra wanted to train with us. One day, after Vegeta caught me looking at her, he called me into the gravity chamber in a low growl.

She stood up, and suddenly announced that she would like to train with us.

(The image shifts)

Now I'm holding Bra down, fucking her from behind and she's panting below me, curling her toes into the sheets of my bed and digging her teeth into my pillow. "Ah…. Ah… Trunks… ah…"

I bit down hard on your shoulder. At first you cried out in pain and shock but soon you began to buck harder against me, crashing your thin hips into mine with all of your strength. I could smell the sweat on your brow and the desire in your breath.

It's not that I want to be hard on her, or punish her even though she drives me out of my mind insane with rage. As a matter of fact, she's never been more beautiful to me as she was this first time, pouting up at me from over her shoulder, saying my name over and over and over, "Trunks… ah!… bi-bi-big brother… hiss!... darling…ah!... more."

This is the first time we had sex. I can still see your perfect breasts and I remember the way that it felt, deflowering the princess. We were having a fight over something petty in my room and you did something stupid and dramatic, because that's how you were back then. I had enough and I thought I'd teach you a lesson. I don't think my intention was to throw her onto my bed and hold her down by the wrists as I grinned down under her, but I did it.

I had no way of knowing that as you bucked your hips from under me, your frustration would become ours. I was so powerful over you then, how could I not be intoxicated? This was what I wanted, I wanted to be on top of you, staring down at you, red faced and fighting me but unable to release yourself from my grasp. I'd never had so much control as when I watched you squirm under me that night.

I bent my head down and immediately caught myself. I turned scarlet.

But it was her eyes, her eyes kept me going, it may sound insane but she willed me to continue. She looked as if I was about to take a toy away from her, a little disheartened. Her eyes fell as if to ask if she'd done something wrong to make me stop.

Did this feel so natural to her? Did she have no concept of what we were about to do?

I blinked when I felt her peck me on the cheek really quickly, still blinking. But her lips hovered about my face, lingering over my cheek as she tilted her head just slightly to the side until they met the corner of my mouth, and very suddenly I had everything in the world I ever wanted.

I couldn't harness my lust when I felt her pink tongue dart into my mouth as she deepened the kiss, managing to slip her hands out of my grasp, weasel that she was, but I could only purr when her hands traveled up my back and around my neck. I'd loved other girls before Bra, but no other creature alive can do the things that Bra Briefs did to me.

Suddenly, she stopped, straddling me with sticky thighs and socks on. Oh, Bura. You grin at me wickedly, running a hand through your hair. She said something to taunt me, to remind me that we were still having a discourse outside of this.

I didn't mean to fuck your brains out, but that was lust glimmering in your eyes and hot breath on your lower lip when I grabbed you around the back of your neck. You tried to glare at me, but I was incensed by your more apparent fear.

I feel a surge of significance and importance. Let me have you, all of you. Give in to me entirely. Love me endlessly, and don't you dare ever forget that I am all that you've ever wanted and I'm the one you wake up next to in the morning. I am everything to you, and you are addicted to me. No matter what I do or say, you always run right back to me and you're ready to take more and give me some hell back for the trouble.

No matter who you sleep with to hide the true nature of our relationship, no matter how betrayed I am, I know I am the one whose neck you wrap your pale, slender arms around at night. I'm the one you smile at in the sunlight. We've been through everything together, and we know each other intimately. It's because we have the same eyes, we see things the exact same way.

I kiss your forehead and hold you tight when you're frightened or ill. I've sacrificed myself for you. You ought to know this. I will love you any way you want it, any way you desire.

_**In the summers you were sweet:**_

Bra is oiling her skin. Bra is sitting outside with nothing but a bikini top and shorts on, Bra is pouting and glancing my way from time to time.

_He finally starts getting it: he understands my roughhousing with Bra, her legs spread wide open in front of me, moving just a little too deliberately to be natural. Why he always needed to touch her so badly. _

Why do I remember lazy days on the beach so well?

The memories break my heart.

_**My sister and I, two pieces of something beautiful, forever connected in a way that we were never meant to know each other.**_

I turn around the corner and the first thing I see are Bra's Mary Jane shoes black and shiny with knee-length white socks, and then as the eye travels up slowly a pleated plaid skirt just a little bit too short. I bite my lip. "What are you doing here?" Her right hand sits lazily over her knee as she sits on a window sill, leaning back against the chilled glass, watching or waiting for something like a cat perched and ready to ambush its prey.

She was wearing a bleached oxford tied in the back to expose her midriff and the faint edges of a tattoo of a fox. I swallow. "I came to see you." I said, not able to blink, "I see you get more beautiful every day." I try to focus on the little silver bracelet on her wrist, leading the eye to her knee, or her skirt, or the cuff of her sleeve right about her smooth elbows.

My words are breathless. We're enchanted by each other. She looks ethereal to me when she responds, batting her eyelashes at me, "Thanks." Her headband framed her bangs over her heart-shaped face. She turned her eyes over at me, casting those lashes up like a spell or a charm. "Are you just going to stand there?" she asked finally, casting a serious look out in my direction.

Her smile gave me chills. A dainty hand with checkered bubblegum-pink and blood red painted nails contrasts with her cerulean locks as it reaches out to tuck a strand of hair away from her face. A rabbit shaped charm on her bracelet jingles and shines silvery in the light. I outstretched a hand and pulled her down. She looked right, and then left and took note that the hallway at school was empty.

I meant to simply catch her, but instead I felt her lips on mine. I can't pull away from her, even when she does these things in public. I think that's why she does them, so that I'll be forced to choose between getting caught and the inevitable many horrible consequences or a sweet and tender moment with her in a place of her choosing.

She's young and reckless, and her mouth was cold. I realized that she was rolling a peppermint around her tongue. She keeps talking about getting her tongue pierced. She's wrapped her legs around my waist and I'm feeling behind for a doorknob or a way to take her somewhere decent.

The mint tastes sweet with her saliva fresh on its outer layer. It was her eyes that stood out to me the most. It's something like bravado, and I'm constantly indulging her, encouraging her bratty behavior and spoiling her. My fingers are traveling up her waist to her breast where frantically I unbutton/rip open your shirt. You're wearing a lace bra. Guess what color it is?

Why do you look so good in lavender? I pushed the shirt off of her shoulders. Running my lips across them and back down, I pulled her bra down with my teeth.

I love the way her face contorts, and her pink nipples in my mouth, and leaving a trail down straight through her belly button to the lace on your panties.

"**Strip. Now," I growl the words into her hair. My hand is around the base of her neck. She is not afraid. **

Bra's eyes never moved away from mine.

Sometimes we just needed each other.

**Cacophony and Dissonance inside My Head **

How can it be that things have gone so right and then so wrong? Bra and I were only sleeping together for a while before she killed herself. Did it just destroy her, to have done something like this? Everything she did from that point on seemed to be so self-destructive. All I've ever wanted was to be there for her and to control her.

I asked her about it, once or twice.

"Was it because of…us?"

She shook her head, **"Come on, fuck me." **She says very sternly to me, not wanting to talk about it. She never wanted to talk about it, any of her trips beyond this world. We remain fully clothed on top of my blankets.

Father once reacted very poorly to an album of only pictures of Bura I used to keep.

We're in bed, my arms curled around her, her cheek on my collarbone. "Bra, I don't just want to sleep with you."

She looked up at me, and sighed, "I know, but sometimes I need to."

"Bra, you've just been changing so much lately and I know you always come back to this," I'm playing with her hair, running my fingers through each strand as I can, "but just tell me why you did it."

She sighs and props herself up on me, ignoring me as I wince in pain, "It wasn't because of you. It was because I had to reconcile a lot of things. But I don't want to worry about that anymore. I just want to be with you forever."

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing. She looks tired.

"I keep on having this nightmare, you know." She says, her voice shivering.

Before I can respond, my father walks in. His face turns white and pale. I can see the rage in his face. He's surprisingly silent, and calm.

My father walks over slowly, yanking Bra away by the arm and she yelps in pain. I throw myself to my feet and punch him square on the jaw, "Don't hurt her!"

My father laughs, "Oh, we will talk soon, boy!"

My father has walked in Bra and I asleep in the same bed before, and each time he's caught us together like this he's been more ferocious. But this time, as my father catches us in this awkward-tense sort of moment, he knocks me out, carries Bra kicking and screaming to her room, and tells her she can't see me anymore. When I return to consciousness, I will be in the gravity room with my father. My father will become omnipresence.

And lonely, heart-broken, hurting, and angry, for the first time ever Bra turns to drugs.

**Trunks remembers his first beating. We come full-circle. **

Omnipresence is beating me to a pulp, currently. God is not benevolent. He's black with hatred, crimson flecks of my blood mingled between his nails, his eyes are blazing, glittering and they're fixed on me. I'm on my hands and knees with shaking hands from exhaustion and defiance, just letting the sweat pour down my head. All he thinks to do is deliver a sharp kick to my head in response, breaking my nose with a sickening crunch and causing me to fall back against the hard metal wall. I think the exact sound I made, bodily fluids swashing around was, "Guh!"

_Do I make you uncomfortable? _

**Brother/ boyfriend/ friend**

_He's mocking me, he knows it. I started pretending, I got better. _

_I wanna play. _

_You've got something in your hair. _

Trunks was always intensely jealous of all of my boyfriends. He questioned me all the time before and after dates. He really has always done this, even when I was younger. I killed myself once, and a crazy ex-boyfriend got me killed again. I met him at a party and used him for drugs, and of course, to not think about how badly I wanted Trunks.

I realized that I liked the jealousy. I wanted him to say that I'm pretty, he would say that I was too pretty.

He would flush and snort and grunt and act out. He would beat them up if he found out I was sleeping with them, he was fiercely loyal and determined to be around me at all times, and still I ended up dead a second time.

I remember when there were more comfortable days, where we would meet and he would tease me quite relentlessly about sex. "Nice hand job" or "that's funny" he would say.

We're coming to terms with all of this now. Because I still need him, because I want him to stay in my life.

I smile at him, and rest my lips on his. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

Because all good things happen slowly.

Because you shouldn't be afraid to get low, or clean up, or face obstacles and fear.

He's going to take care of me. I just know it.

**Goten's p.o.v. (a finale)**

Hi. My name is Son Goten. Trunks calls me Chibi and Bra, Go-Chan. I like Goten though, it feels simpler. When nothing else in your life is simple, maybe you should only be called by one name. Maybe no one should address you with ambiguity or affection. It only gives them more ammunition, as they shout at you or cry out an endearing whimper of my name.

I'm sure they're off somewhere laughing at my expense. I'm not angry but I am sad. I'm sad because, as you already know, Bra and Trunks are in love. Worse, I'm in love with each of them in different ways. And worse, they're siblings and Trunks is slowly dying physically from Vegeta's wrath, and Bura is fading away into some troubled world of sex and drugs. Or at least she was. My larger fear is that she will fade away into Trunks' world, right where he wants her.

I'd love to save either of them, but the more Vegeta tells Trunks to stay away from Bra, the more Trunks defies him.

Trunks calls Bura Little Sister or Princess. Sometimes I call her Princess, but it's mostly to be sarcastic. Sometimes it's Bulla, or Bra-Chan. Bra is pretty standard.

"Hey Trunks, are you still fucking your sister?" I ask when I see him, sourly gazing upon him. Bra is nowhere to be seen, but he smells of her perfume.

His hand is immediately at my neck. The pressure on my windpipe is stern, a warning. There's affection in his controlled rage. Vegeta comes to mind, even though I wish that he wouldn't.

Of course I'd want to get close to her too. It's like knowing one meant knowing the other.

"I'm taking care of Bra, Goten, and no one is going to keep me from doing that." His voice is sharp, his eyes are keen, and I can tell, as I look into his eyes, that he is in control. "I'm going to protect her, from all of you."

* * *

**-CL**


End file.
